I don't shop much. I find no joy in returning to stores over and over to wait for prices to drop and to return things I thought I wanted. I tend to look for stores that reliably carry what I want, then I stick with them. When I lived in the Seattle area, I shopped at McLendon's, the fabulous independent Puget Sound hardware store, and Bartell's, my favorite independent drug store. I could buy swim suits (not sun-bathing suits or "resort suits," but real, honest-to-goodness tank suits for actual swimming) any time of year at Sylvia's Swim Shop. Gawd, how I miss them!
It's 75 degrees here in Indio, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I sure would like to sit out on my patio. But none of the big box stores around here is selling outdoor furniture right now. "Why not?" I asked one of the employees. "We have it in summer," he said. Right. Summer, when it's 118 degrees and touching the metal on a patio chair could give you 2nd degree burns. The high-end specialty patio stores have outdoor furniture, of course. Great, if you have a real budget and are not constrained to big-box-store-type prices. Personally, I'm considering moving my card table and chairs onto the patio. A couple of medium cardboard boxes would make good ottomans, don't you think?
I thought a few indoor plants would cheer me up. I tried to buy terra cotta pots to start some African violets from cuttings. Nope. No pots. Not 'til spring--when it's already 93 degrees here. Guaranteed to shrivel new plants in a matter of minutes.
Pet stores are not immune, either. An employee of a big box pet store told me when she worked at one of her chain's stores in a cold part of Nevada, they didn't carry pet water bowls with electric warmers to keep the water from freezing. But they have "tons" of them at this store, in a city where a nighttime low temperature anywhere freezing causes breathless reports of "extreme" weather on the nightly newscast.
I finally mail-ordered a swimsuit from Sylvia's Swim Shop, because the ones I have are turning to mesh and the stores around here don't get swim suits until...you guessed it: summer. After decades of marketing research, in a country rife with bright people, we find ourselves held hostage by huge selling machines that completely ignore the tenets of customer-oriented marketing. They offer overcoats to people in the desert and dog cooling beds to people in the Sierra Nevadas . Why does this surprise me? Shouldn't I be used to a lack of common sense by now? After all, I did work for the government for a year!
I want to support my local merchants, really I do. If I could only find them. Maybe they were all squashed by the big box store juggernaut. I feel sad--and more than a little pissed off. I don't need an overcoat, dammit! I need a swimsuit--and some patio furniture!
My hand is reluctantly poised over my mouse. The siren call of the internet tells me I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it. The siren doesn't mention what it's like to try to return things to faceless far-away vendors, and it doesn't lament, even for a minute, what taking the sales tax away from my own city does to the local economy. Gad. When did shopping become such drama?
It's 75 degrees here in Indio, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I sure would like to sit out on my patio. But none of the big box stores around here is selling outdoor furniture right now. "Why not?" I asked one of the employees. "We have it in summer," he said. Right. Summer, when it's 118 degrees and touching the metal on a patio chair could give you 2nd degree burns. The high-end specialty patio stores have outdoor furniture, of course. Great, if you have a real budget and are not constrained to big-box-store-type prices. Personally, I'm considering moving my card table and chairs onto the patio. A couple of medium cardboard boxes would make good ottomans, don't you think?
I thought a few indoor plants would cheer me up. I tried to buy terra cotta pots to start some African violets from cuttings. Nope. No pots. Not 'til spring--when it's already 93 degrees here. Guaranteed to shrivel new plants in a matter of minutes.
Pet stores are not immune, either. An employee of a big box pet store told me when she worked at one of her chain's stores in a cold part of Nevada, they didn't carry pet water bowls with electric warmers to keep the water from freezing. But they have "tons" of them at this store, in a city where a nighttime low temperature anywhere freezing causes breathless reports of "extreme" weather on the nightly newscast.
I finally mail-ordered a swimsuit from Sylvia's Swim Shop, because the ones I have are turning to mesh and the stores around here don't get swim suits until...you guessed it: summer. After decades of marketing research, in a country rife with bright people, we find ourselves held hostage by huge selling machines that completely ignore the tenets of customer-oriented marketing. They offer overcoats to people in the desert and dog cooling beds to people in the Sierra Nevadas . Why does this surprise me? Shouldn't I be used to a lack of common sense by now? After all, I did work for the government for a year!
I want to support my local merchants, really I do. If I could only find them. Maybe they were all squashed by the big box store juggernaut. I feel sad--and more than a little pissed off. I don't need an overcoat, dammit! I need a swimsuit--and some patio furniture!
My hand is reluctantly poised over my mouse. The siren call of the internet tells me I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it. The siren doesn't mention what it's like to try to return things to faceless far-away vendors, and it doesn't lament, even for a minute, what taking the sales tax away from my own city does to the local economy. Gad. When did shopping become such drama?
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